Saturday, October 02, 2010

Alien Underground

Over at Datacide, Christoph has been publishing texts from Alien Underground, a great zine published in South London in 1994/95 offerin 'techno theory for juvenile delinquents'. Two issues were published before the project morphed into Datacide, still going strong albeit with a somewhat irregular publishing schedule.

Reading these made me nostalgic for that scene, encompassing Dead by Dawn in Brixton, squat parties, the Association of Autonomous Astronauts, anti-CJB demonstrations and all round techno-optimism - with a combination of Deleuze & Guattari and very fast and loud beats seeming to offer a new radical line of flight from capitalism. In those days I seriously thought I would never listen to a guitar again! Well maybe it wasn't sufficient basis on its own for a 21st century radical movement, but it certainly created some interesting situations and opened up new possibilities, some of which are still being played out (in all senses of the phrase).

There's a couple of old pieces from me: a report of a London History Workshop meeting on jazz culture: 'The powers restricting “raves” in the Criminal Justice Act are not the first authoritarian response to a dance-based culture. The association of popular dancing with sex, intoxication, and black people has made it an object of moralist suspicion at various times in history. It was the jazz dance craze which swept across much of the west that was the source of both pleasure and panic in the 1920s'; and a review of the book Microphone Fiends: '"Underground” nights in expensive clubs and “underground” compilations on major record labels might be bullshit, but loads of people taking over empty buildings and creating free or very cheap space for parties on their own terms is a real alternative to the commodity culture industry. And when sound systems become the focus for a serious showdown with the cops in central London, as happened on October 9th [anti-CJB demonstration], it is clear we are no longer just talking about empty gestures of fake rebellion'.

Yup, I've been repeating myself for at least 15 years, but hey, once you've got your schtick why change it?

Politics of Dancing

'People have always come together to move to music. In the process communities have been created, social divisions challenged, pleasure exalted over work and a billion relationships have blossomed. At the same time dancing bodies have often been subject to regulation – rules about when, where and how they can move, rules about who is allowed to dance with who, rules about what dancers can wear and put inside their bodies… That, in essence, is the 'politics of dancing'.

Musicking

'musicking... is an activity in which all those present are involved and for whose nature and quality, success or failure, everyone present bears some responsibility. It is not just a matter of composers, or even perform­ers, actively doing something to, or for, passive listeners. Whatever it is we are doing, we are all doing it together—performers, listeners... dancers, ticket collectors, piano movers, roadies, cleaners and all' (Christopher Small).

Dancing Questionnaire

The aim of the 'dancing questionnaire' is to get a sense of the diversity of people's experiences of dancing and musicking. If you want to contribute, please answer the following questions yourself and send to transpontine@btinternet.com.

1. Can you remember your first experience of dancing? / 2.
What’s the most interesting/significant thing that has happened to you while out dancing? / 3. You. Dancing. The best of times… / 4. You. Dancing. The worst of times… / 5.
Can you give a quick tour of the different dancing scenes/times/places you’ve frequented? / 6. When and where did you last dance? / 7. You’re on your death bed. What piece of music would make your leap up for one final dance? (Previous Questionnaires)

Photo policy

I spend a lot of time trying to find evocative images to go with some of the text on this site. I always fully credit and link to where photos were sourced from. If though I have used one of your images in a way you are not happy with, email me and I will remove it.